Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 313" video.

  1. wrt the G3 carrier conversion question, I do not find anything in the Washington treaty that is relevant to the conversions of Courageous and Glorious. All capital ships of each nation are listed on either the retention list, or disposal list. The Courageouses are on neither list. My takeaway from that omission is that, as the Admiralty had called them "light cruisers" since inception, the treaty respected that, called them "cruisers", and grandfathered them, just as all the armored cruisers that exceeded treaty limits in displacement and gun size were grandfathered. The treaty clause about converting existing or building ships to carriers does not apply to the Courageouses either. The clause only relates to the conversion of ships that exceed the treaty limit of 27,000 tons. Even after conversion, the Courageouses were well under 27,000, so the treaty clause would not apply. First London would have provided an incentive to reclassify the Courageouses as anything but cruisers due to the establishment of cruiser fleet displacement limits, but the conversions were already done, so First London did not cause their conversion either. My suspicion is Courageous and Glorious were converted due to an Admiralty assessment that they would make better carriers than they did cruisers. Given the cost of the conversions, I almost wonder if the Admiralty would have been better off if it had built new, optimized, carrier hulls, transferred the machinery from the Courageous class hulls, then scrapped the Courageouses as a mistake.
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